In China that’s what authorities told their people when photos surfaced showing Chinese pork glowing a spooky, iridescent blue after kitchen lights were switched off. No problem said the authorities. Just a little contamination by phosphorescent bacteria. Just make sure the pork is well cooked and it’s perfectly safe to eat.

Think we’re safe and immune here in the U.S. from tidbits like that and all the other tainted food scandals popping up around China lately? Starting in 2008 when 6 babies died and 300,000 were sickened by milk contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine, these scandals have included arsenic-laced soy sauce, plaster tofu, mushrooms treated with fluorescent bleach; bean sprouts tainted with sodium nitrite, urea, animal antibiotics and a plant hormone called 6-benzyladenine, fake wine, phony eggs and imitation fish. Recent tests of food made from rice flour showed one third of the samples contained levels of aluminum above national standards. And let us not forget last week’s killer photos of “sewer oil” that cooks retrieved from drains beneath restaurants for the purpose of recycling — cooking food over and over — YIKES — AGAIN.

These stories are not as distant from our shores as you may think. Canned Chinese foods have lined dollar store shelves for years, but China has also made solid inroads in higher end markets. After Mexico, Canada and Chile, China is now our fourth largest supplier of fruits and vegetables. I was even more surprised to discover China now dominates the U.S, apple juice market. Apple juice concentrate produced in China and reconstituted in the states accounts for 60% of America’s apple juice supply in top brands such as Motts and Apple and Eve.

My own experience with Chinese food happened before their food scandals hit the media. Purchasing a can of “Made in China” mangos from the dollar store, I thought how bad could it be? Pre. . .tty bad. The unpleasant chemical taste had nothing to do with any mango I’ve ever met and the texture was disturbingly mushy. Thinking I might have simply come across a bad batch, I then sampled some strawberries canned in China. Again the chemical assault, wipeout of any fruit flavor and creepy, disintegrating texture.

As far as I know only one store in America — Trader Joe’s — has listened to their customer’s concerns, drawn the line and refused to sell any food products from China. Apparently their suppliers are also required to refrain from using Chinese ingredients in foods they produce for Trader Joe’s.

One of the most disturbing aspects of China’s food scandals is their repetition. Even though two milk company executives were executed for juicing up their milk with protein pretender melamine, it didn’t stop others in the food industry from later doing EXACTLY the same thing again and just last week AGAIN when 26 tons of melamine-tainted powdered milk about to be churned into ice cream were confiscated by the government.

As yet China has no central regulation agency for their food industry. Oversight is haphazard with under-funded, ill-trained food safety regulators operating with unclear regulations fraught with legal loopholes. Most of them, says a food safety expert with the World Health Organization, haven’t a clue about major food-borne diseases or contaminants in the food process.

The details of how we raise animals and poultry here in factory like conditions seem geared to cause big bacterial problems. Stuffing the critters with antibiotics will only work so long…The more I read about food here, the more I’m amazed that more people don’t get sick more often.

Ooof. Well, first, don’t buy food from the dollar store, unless it’s basic snacks that were not made in China. 😛

Second, don’t buy meat from China. Check your labels! I’ll buy many other things from China, but not food if I can avoid it… the downside is that labels can be inaccurate. What if 80% of it was made in China and the product was “finished” in the USA? Need to watch out for that, too.

As far as the melamine is concerned doesn’t it come from the government rewarding those that produce with higher protein? Maybe if the government weren’t so corrupt the food wouldn’t be so bad. Let the internationals come in with their own agencies and see what’s *really* going on with the food.

The chances of any Internationals coming in to China and doing ANYTHING is a big fat zero. The country seems to be getting more insular by the minute. True, government corruption is prevalent, which seems to be the biggest problem there, but the people themselves say business men, interested only in profit, are without morals.

I’ve learned my lesson about buying food from China and in fact I won’t buy anything from there that’s ingested, like toothpaste. One thing I’ve noticed on labels lately is that some companies will list the distributor of the product but not where it’s made – which I thought was illegal. This makes me wonder if it’s a way to disguise the fact it’s actually made in China from those people here who are wary of that country’s food products.